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Rich Brown Soup

A hearty beef soup simmered with onions, cloves, spices, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 8,686 recipes mention both. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Rich Brown Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Stir the beef with the cloves.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, mace, and nutmeg.

  3. Fry the sliced onions in butter.

  4. Chop the onions and spread them over the meat in the soup pot.

  5. Pour in the water.

Stew and strain

  1. Stew slowly for 5 to 6 hours, skimming well.

  2. When the meat has dissolved into shreds, strain it.

  3. Return the liquid to the pot.

Finish the soup

  1. Add the claret or port wine.

  2. Simmer slowly until dinner time.

  3. When the soup is reduced to 3 quarts, it is ready to serve.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lean fresh beef
Breaks down during long stewing, dissolving into shreds that give the soup its body and meaty flavour.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, adding body and savoury depth to the broth.
Claret or port wine
Adds acidity and fruity depth, rounding out the rich, meaty broth.

The step that matters

Skimming during the long stew. Skimming removes foam and fat that rise as the beef cooks, keeping the broth clear and free of greasy, off-flavours.

Flavor stand-ins for the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, clove, pepper, nutmeg, onion, butter, port wine):

  1. Cinnamonbetter flavor fit
  2. Allspicebetter flavor fit
  3. Thymebetter flavor fit
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, clove, pepper, nutmeg, onion, butter, port wine. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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